


Bad Things Happen Bingo

by Miri1984



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Bad Things Happen Bingo, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-04-11 15:51:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 3,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19112866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miri1984/pseuds/Miri1984
Summary: I got a heap of prompts for bad things happen bingo and wanted to put them all in the same place as they came out. Have fun. It's NOT.





	1. Touch Starved

First, she stops kissing him goodnight. 

Nine years old and still reeling from the disappearance of his father, he doesn’t realise it at first. He’s always been somewhat independent, after all, liking to do his own thing while his parents live their lives but now that parents have been reduced to parent he’s more conscious of his mother’s routines.

She’s slower now, he tells himself. Grieving. The fact that whenever she hugs him it’s brief and she has her eyes closed when she pulls away just means she has a lot to deal with right now. They both do but she is his mum and she is sad and Martin just puts that in a box marked “things I can’t make better” and starts to learn how to make tea.

She’s always loved a nice cup of tea. That at least doesn’t change.

#

The hugs stop when he’s ten.

#

At fifteen, she falls down the stairs. It’s a natural progression of the disease, that she starts to lose motor control, and he comes home from school to find her in a heap on the floor swearing. Not the first time he’s heard her swear, no, of course not, but there is a quaver to her voice, a tremulous, built up anger, that frightens him and he rushes forward to help her to  _ hug her _ to give her  _ to give himself some comfort  _ and she snaps at him. “For god’s sake, Martin, just call an ambulance,” before he can touch her, before he can help her to her feet, or even find out what is wrong.

His voice trembles as he calmly gives the ambulance the address and he notices she doesn’t pull away from them when they reach for her and arrange her in the stretcher to carry her out. 

He starts to follow.

“Don’t be stupid,” she says. “There’s nothing you can do. Stay here. They’ll let you know when I’m all right to come home.”

#

At seventeen she can no longer shower herself. Every time he helps her to the chair they’ve bought and gently sponges her down he can see her clenching her teeth and shutting her eyes. He tells himself it’s because she hates the indignity and sends out a dozen more CVs.

#

At nineteen he drowns himself in the lips of a boy at a nightclub and wonders why his entire body is singing with contact. Surely it’s not meant to be as good as this? But he’s gasping against the other man’s mouth, shivering when fingers reach up under his shirt and brush against bare skin, and when he whispers in Martin’s ear that he can take him home every nerve in his body wants to say yes.

“I can’t,” he says instead. “My mum…”

The boy pulls back, gives him a quizzical look, shrugs. “Sure. Whatever.” He walks back to the dance floor and Martin cannot bring himself to follow.

#

When Elias shakes his hand, when the contract is signed, he knows well enough not to let the yearning show on his face. Elias, though, tilts his head, an odd smile on his lips as he bids Martin good luck, and Martin’s palm is cold for hours.


	2. Punisher

The tape is on his desk, in an envelope that also contains a note, the day before they’re going to leave for Ny Alesund. The handwriting on it is horribly familiar and Jon takes a moment to wonder whether Elias has actually sent it from Belmarsh, had it tucked away in his orange jumpsuit, waiting for just the right moment to annoy him.

  
Also he had been told quite explicitly that part of the condition of his imprisonment was no contact with Jon. If this doesn’t constitute contact then Jon could spend a few weeks writing out choice thoughts about his treatment of everyone and have it delivered in a large box with a bow on top, and possibly a stick of leftover C4.

  
Prick.

  
He considers just tossing the tape in the bin, but there is a chance there is information that will help them and he’d feel stupid if he only found it out after they’d failed to stop the dark, so he sets the note aside (there is no way he wants to read what Elias has to say to him outside of a recording) and plays the tape.

  
It shouldn’t be surprising how hard it is to hear Martin’s voice.

  
_Hello,_ Martin says, and Jon’s chest _hurts._

  
_What are you doing?_ Elias’ voice, clipped and precise, and… afraid.

  
He listens.

  
Some sentences are like a shard of glass through his heart.

  
_What. You think I’m doing this for **him?**_

  
_Is it so hard to believe that I hate you as well?_

  
It’s nothing Jon didn’t know before. Nothing he hadn’t worked out before the Unknowing. Nothing Jon had ever intended to act on.

  
_God I was so stupid._

  
And then Martin starts to cry.

  
Jon isn’t capable of hurting himself any longer, that much had become clear enough when he was trying to make an anchor, but his fists clench so hard that his nails are digging divots into his palms and his teeth grind against themselves in his jaw. When the tape finishes Jon has to uncurl his fingers one by one. He wipes at his eyes, not surprised that they are wet, although he knows that his own tears were silent and sympathetic rather than the ragged, gasping sobs he had heard on the tape. Why would Elias have sent him this? Surely he doesn’t want the mess of feelings trying to sort themselves out in Jon’s chest to stop him from disrupting the dark?

  
He remembers the note.

  
_Claim him,_ it says. _Or Peter will. And once he is no longer ours, our God will not care what I do to him._

  
Jon crumples the note in his fist and hurls it against the wall.


	3. Nuture

Elias never did appreciate just  _being there_  for his people. Bad management, Peter thinks, knowing the importance of a strong Captain when one is on the open ocean. Of course, his people don’t appreciate Peter either, because, well, they don’t know that he’s there, but Peter can allow himself a little surge of pride at how well everyone is doing under his care.

He does a daily check. Naturally he starts with Martin, who is the only one who can feel his presence sometimes (when Peter allows it). Beautiful, poignant Martin, bent over his desk whispering sweet nothings to a tape recorder in lieu of his love. There is a reason Martin is his favourite. Martin is a rich, complex flavour and sometimes Peter can get drunk on him just by standing in the doorway of their office. Rejection. Isolation. Pining. Desperation. They all blend together so perfectly that Peter can spend hours teasing out each individual strand and following it to its source and back again to the point where it merges into the aching heart of the man.

Peter can sip from that cup at any time, however. It is his in a way that the others are not, and one can get tired of even the finest wine if one over indulges.

He checks on Daisy, who tastes of dirt and panic whenever she is separate from Basira or Jon. Touching how that little relationship has begun, Peter thinks, lips curling against the comfort they find in each other. But there is a nourishment to that comfort as well, because what Daisy wants from Jon she can only get from Basira, and what Jon wants…

...but Jon is last on his little trip. For good reason.

Basira… well.

Basira is a closed book, (the metaphor makes him chuckle) and is in the process of shutting down her humanity. She tells herself it’s to save people, to save the world, and doesn’t notice the creeping, aching loneliness that settles in her heart whenever she looks at Daisy, remembering what she has lost.

He glosses over Melanie, so angry that she’ll make connections with a monster in defiance of the monster she blames. She is a contributor to Jon’s isolation, and for that he is grateful, but her very nature requires connections and he has always found the Slaughter far too… intimate. One has to touch, in order to kill, after all.

And then he comes to Jon.

If he could take a picture and show it to Martin he thinks he could actually break the boys heart. Peter knows if Jon tries hard enough he will be able to see him, but Jon is respecting Martin’s wishes, Jon is placing his trust in Martin, Jon is an utter fool and he is utterly, completely delicious.

He wonders if Elias planned this. Wrapped up the two of them to give to Peter as a gift, so caught in each other and the fate of the world that their yearning is palpable. Elias would have known how Martin would fall, head over heels for this impossible, terrible man but perhaps he didn’t predict that Jon would do the same, that small kindnesses, that determination, that desperation could finally breach the walls of Jon’s heart.

He scribbles in files and records statements and tries so very hard not to look, not to know, not to use the powers he has as though respecting Martin’s wishes will save any of them. So human. So foolish.

Peter is glutted. Peter is spoiled. Peter will not let it end.


	4. Double Edged Sword

He could have dealt with it if he’d been hurting  _himself._

_No. Don’t be stupid Martin, you’ve come too far for that._

He  _is_  hurting himself. He can’t deny that, but he’s been hurting for twenty years, he’s been hurting since his father left, he’s used to the pain, he knows its angles and its sharp edges and its gaping, dark holes.

Jon doesn’t understand that particular kind of pain. Oh he’s prickly and difficult and people hate him for it, but they don’t ignore him. He has a presence in too many people’s lives, even if it is a negative one (not for Martin, never for Martin), has an impact on the world around him. There is an  _activeness_  to everyone’s relationship with Jon, he makes a Jon shaped hole in the universe that it is impossible to ignore and so the Lonely, for all it might admire him for a distance, does not have the same hold on him that it has on Martin.

Martin whom even Elias, even the  _watcher,_  overlooked.

Martin never dreamed that he could have the kind of power over Jon that Jon has had over him for years.

A few choice words are all it takes. _I have to go. Please stop finding me._  That’s it. The naked hurt in Jon’s eyes cuts him like knives and he can’t even offer any comfort.

_I hope you’re happy, Peter._


	5. Broken

 

Friday nights he’d go clubbing, sometimes. He used to go with Sasha after work drinks, they’d dance together, Tim would flirt and sometimes hook up and Sasha would give him double thumbs up as he apologised for leaving her alone.

Or he wouldn’t hook up and sometimes they’d spend the night, no strings, friends with benefits, the familiarity of each other’s bodies and the safety of being known enough to keep them in each other’s orbits.

He didn’t know why they’d stopped.

_ He knew. _

He’d tried to reach for normality, in the weeks since the murder, since the corridors, since the  _ spiral.  _ Some friday nights he found himself going through the motions, downing shots at the bar and laughing, crowding someone (anyone) against a wall and trying to lose himself in their warmth. He went to worse and worse places. Pushed the limits. Ended up sleeping in tenements with graffiti splashed on the walls and urine puddled in the corners of their malfunctioning lifts, walking home at four am, drunk, alone, a target.

Elias would not kill him. But Tim was pretty damned sure he wouldn’t protect him either.

It was a Thursday morning when he stumbled in, head throbbing, through the tunnels, only to be met by Elias as he tried to creep up into the archives. Even after everything, he was still looking. He would find the circus, and he would destroy it. Or he would die trying.

“You need to stop,” Elias said, voice short and clipped and grating.

“Fuck off,” Tim said, trying to push past, but Elias grasped his shoulder and Tim should have been able to shove him off but the grip was like iron. Grey, cold eyes bored into him and Elias’ second hand came up to grasp his chin, tilting Tim’s face from side to side like Elias was a parent with an errant child. He flicked at Tim’s cheek and Tim winced. 

“Clean yourself up,” he said. “And then stop.”

Tim raised his hand to his cheek as Elias let him go and felt the swelling there. Remembered where he’d ended up, the night before, remembered the shouts, the blows. He’d taken them and not even bothered to swing back. 

He ground his teeth as Elias walked back towards his office, then paused and looked back at him. “They won’t kill you, Tim. I look after what is mine. Even when it is broken.”


	6. Enough

Gran sighs when he asks her to check the room for spiders. His voice trembles, because he can’t go in there until she has pronounced it safe, and he knows she thinks he is being foolish, and he hates it, hates being afraid, hates knowing that he is too weak to deal with it on his own.

He hasn’t told her about the book.

He stands in the doorway as she goes through the motions, lifting his pillow, checking behind the door, checking the fastenings on the window.

“It’s fine, Jon,” she says, ruffling his hair as she comes back out. He knows she cannot easily get down to the ground to check under the bed, knows if he asks her she will do it anyway. 

He doesn’t ask.

“No spiders tonight,” Gran says, planting an awkward kiss on the top of his head. He squeezes her arm and nods, still trembling, trying desperately to push the fear down into his belly and clamp it there, keep it contained.

“Thanks Gran,” he says, and she gives him her tired smile, the one that is tinged with sorrow for the son lost. She loves him. He knows she loves him. That should be enough. 

It should be. 

He steps into the room and pretends he doesn’t feel the shadow of a long, hairy limb curling around him. It’s safe. There are no spiders tonight.

If he tells himself that enough, it will have to be true.


	7. What'll you have?

He’s fine. It’s fine. Everything’s fine. He just has to get to the end of this shift at the bar and he’s allowed to go home for a few hours before he starts at the cafe. At least he’s not on open tomorrow. Last drinks have been called and he’s loading up the dishwasher and he isn’t resentful of that one, raucous, very drunk booth near the back of the bar. People come to the pub to let off steam, to relax, to talk with friends. He can’t blame them that it’s been a ten hour shift (Mark had called him in to do a few extra hours and he wasn’t going to say no, not with the power bill that needed paying).

He doesn’t notice how his hand shakes as he reaches for the last of the glasses on the bar. Doesn’t realise his knees have given out until there is a sharp pain in the back of his head.

He’s on the floor, backside unpleasantly damp because he’s missed the rubber mat and Saturday nights always get too busy to bother mopping up every spill. He’s sitting in a pool of dark ale that Emily fumbled, laughing at herself before she clocked off about three hours ago. He wonders why his head hurts and realises that he’s bashed it on the ice machine, reaches up one hand to tangle in his hair. It doesn’t come away bloody, thank god. The last thing he can afford is a hospital trip right now.

He gets to his feet, slowly, looking up to see one of the people at that last table glaring down at him.

“You said last drinks,” she slurs. 

He swallows. Gets to his feet.

His voice doesn’t shake. 

“What’ll you have?”


	8. Keep Going

The explosion knocks her off her feet. If she’d been any closer she would have been injured by the sheer volume of it. Daisy does her work well, she thinks, a small kernel of pride in her chest, before the warmth of that thought is swallowed whole by a gaping pit of grief.

There is no sign of them. She is the only one outside. The only one alive.

The ambulance arrives. Then the police. She recognises the officers, all sectioned. She refuses their offer of a lift back into town and simply waits for the bodies.

They find Tim first. She confirms his identity, although it is difficult. She hopes Daisy won’t look like that when they find her.

But they don’t find her. Basira doesn’t know if that’s better or worse.

She keeps going. That’s what got her through the unknowing, after all, the ability to keep moving forwards, to look for a way out. Melanie looks at her with desperate sympathy. Martin is too wrapped up in his own grief to give anything to her and she can’t blame him for that.

She keeps going. She won’t think about Daisy, buried under mountains of rubble (she dreams of her every night, sometimes she thinks she can hear her calling Basira’s name, sometimes she thinks she can even call back and Daisy will hear her). She won’t think about the poor, ruined body of Tim (she dreams of him every night, his fierce determination, his sad acceptence, the inevitibility of his death). She won’t think of Jon, halfway to a monster, not alive but not dead enough (she does not dream of Jon, she has had her fill of those kinds of dreams).

She won’t think of Martin, who tries not to show his resentment that she is the one who came back and she is not the one he was waiting for.

She will keep going, because she has to. She will keep going, because if she doesn’t, those deaths will mean nothing. She will keep going because she is who she is and the Unknowing couldn’t take that away from her and nothing else will ever get the chance.


	9. Endgame

“Do you think Gertrude would be proud of us?” Jon asks, drily. The huff of almost laughter from the man sitting at his back makes the corners of his mouth curl up and an odd warmth flutter in his chest.

“Tim would be,” Martin says, and Jon tries very hard to ignore the hitch in his voice, a hitch that is echoing in his own. “I’m honestly surprised you managed to source the explosives.”

“Adelard came through,” Jon said. “Obviously still keen for the opportunity to take stabs at Elias.”

“We shouldn’t be talking, Jon,” Martin said then. “Need. To save. The air.”

There isn’t enough light for them to see each other. Not enough space for them to move even, although it feels nothing like the buried. Or maybe it does. He opens his mouth to tell Martin that it doesn’t matter how much they talk. No one will be able to make it to them in time. He was very thorough. And it turns out the beholding couldn’t exactly hide the knowledge of exactly where to place the charges from him.

Being on the threshhold of godhood did have its advantages, after all.

“You shouldn’t have stayed,” Jon says then. “I told you to go.”

“I couldn’t,” Martin says. “I couldn’t leave you.”

“You’re a bloody idiot, Martin Blackwood.”

Jon feels a hand find his in the darkness. Warm and soft and alive. Martin wraps his fingers around Jon’s and squeezes. “Yeah,” he says. “Well aware of that, thanks.”

Jon leans his head back, fighting against the urge to take larger breaths. There isn’t much time left. He knows that now, even though Knowing has been denied him. Some things are inevitable. 

“I’m sorry,” Jon says. 

“I’m not,” Martin says.


	10. Stop

He wonders what Elias is thinking, safe in his cell as he watches Jon (he knows he’s watching) systematically going through the institute, placing the relevant explosives. Possibly he believes Jon will leave before he activates the detonator, but Jon Knows that would only delay the inevitable. It’s not just the archives that have to go. It’s the Archivist, and Jon has accepted that in a way which he does not believe Elias capable.

He goes to his own office last. Knowing that Elias has prepared something for him there, although not quite able to Know what.

He is stronger than Elias now, and he is in his place of power, but Elias has had many many more years of this and Jon knows he needs to be prepared.

He is not prepared for Martin.

Martin’s arms are folded, a slight frown of concern on his face. It’s been so long since Jon’s seen him, even longer since he’s seen Martin express emotion. He didn’t take to the change the same way Peter did. He didn’t learn to ape feelings.

“Elias told us you were planning something,” Martin says.

Jon winces at the flat tone. “Of course he did,” he mutters.

“He wanted to let you know that he could do this at any time,” Martin says, and there is a shudder that goes through Martin’s entire frame. Jon steps forward as Martin gasps, leaning forward to clutch at the desk in what looks like pain.

“Oh,” he lets out a small, horrified sound. “Oh _Jon.”_

The tone of his voice would have been enough to let Jon know exactly what has happened, even without the flood of Knowledge that pours into him.. The Lonely has given up its hold on Martin.

_You can have him back. If you stop._

Jon reaches out a hand and Martin clasps it in fingers that are shaking. His face is wet and his heart is in his mouth.

_Martin._

All he has to do is stop.


End file.
